What. A. Year. It’s pretty much done: one more day of day-job, several weeks of resting AND writing, and then back for another round in 2011. January seems so long ago I can’t even remember what I wanted to get out of this year. Of course, I *should* have written …
Yes, she arrived safely in the PO Box last week, and she’s gorgeous: She sure could do with a sandwich, though. The camera batteries died before I could work out how to re-dress her (not that the scythe & the horned cape aren’t resplendent), but rest assured it’s a-coming! In …
Chuffed to hear my story, Six Suicides, one of the newbies in A Book of Endings, has scored an Australian Shadows Award for best short fiction! Says judge Bill Congreve, “I eventually chose “Six Suicides” because of its character, style, structure and simple humanity.” Aw, shucks! Finally someone notices I …
Very chuffed to see that A BOOK OF ENDINGS is in the finals list for the Australian Shadows Award. My short story ‘Six Suicides’ (a story I swore nobody would read!) also made the shortlist, seeing as this year the Shadows are divvied into three categories: long fiction, short fiction, …
Over at the Twelfth Planet Press blog (publisher of such excellent tomes as A Book of Endings, Horn, Roadkill/Siren Beat & the pending Sprawl & Glitter Rose, to name a few), editor & publisher Alisa Krasnostein puts the tough word on collections: To me, a debut collection is almost a …
The Locus Recommended Reading list is up — & so is our little book that could, A Book of Endings! *woot* & thanks to all the Locus readers. There’s fine company to be had on the list: Twelfth Planet shows its spine, with Horn & Siren Beat also getting mentions. …
How cool, A BOOK OF ENDINGS has made the shortlist for the 2010 William L. Crawford Award! I’m assured the readers are ‘very picky’, so a heartfelt *hug* and congratulations to fellow short-listers, Kari Sperring (LIVING WITH GHOSTS), and Ali Shaw (THE GIRL WITH GLASS FEET — wow, I love …
Look at that, two of the new stories from A Book of Endings (now available, etc) are on the nomination list for the British SF Awards. Woot! *Not* the shortlist, I hasten to add. It simply means, I think, that some kind member(s) of the British SF Association has (er, …
Over at the American Book Review, they’ve made a list of 100 best last lines from novels. Most of ‘em aren’t even spoilers. Some of ‘em really make you wonder what the hell kinda book came BEFORE that line. Check it out. Also a note to whatever hacker tried to …
One of the opportunities A Book of Endings created was the chance to get my writing in front of a wider audience. To see what the rest of the world might think. The Australian genre scene is so warm & welcoming that I’d grown suspicious of the kind words occasionally …
… turns out you can still buy Redsine #7, edited by Trent Jamieson & Garry Nurrish, from about 2002. I loved Redsine and always wished it had continued for longer. It was a classy zine, and short (a good characteristic for a zine, imho: one-sitting-reading always scores well with me). …
Honestly? I got into short stories because it seemed like a good way to learn to write. It’s become much more than that, of course, but I’ve not paused very often to think about what place they do have for me, and further what place they have for readers. I’ve …
Over at Terra Incognita, my story Hush is now online as a podcast — AND coming soon to iTunes. Double the Hush! This time we don’t get the whiskey tones of Nick Evans, I’m afraid. The author has to read her own stories at Terra Incognita. Must be part of …
For anyone waiting on a copy of A Book of Endings from last week’s launch (where we ran out of books), the box has arrived! Distribution is imminent. I’m off to the World Fantasy Con in a little over a week, though, so we might have to make this quick. …
Lots of excellent endings in last week’s poll. Thanks, everyone. I had a blast reading through the nominations. I got to hear the ending to Ulysses (without having to read the book — thanks, Wendy! And great ending, too). I found myself in complete agreement with Stephen Dedman about the …
A huge thank-you to the people who came to the launch of A Book of Endings yesterday. NG Gallery put on a damn classy show (the catering was so artfully done most people actually *mistook* it for art), & the crowd was cheerful & kind & wonderful. I was blown …
I’ve been thinking about endings — as I am wont to do — & I thought I’d list a few of my favourites to inspire you to tell me your own favourite ending: * Best ending = LITTLE BIG, by John Crowley: I don’t often describe a book a ‘beautiful’, …
A reminder for anyone who’s free this Saturday afternoon (and also, in the vicinity of Sydney), that A Book of Endings will be launching locally: 3pm Saturday 10 October NG Art Gallery Upstairs at 3 Little Queen St Chippendale NSW 2008 (about 2 bus stops from Central Station or a …
Spring is a crazy time. Not just because of odd things like dust storms, but also because spring is when I want to do EVERYTHING at once. I want to write and read and paint and sing and watch great cinema and scour my brain of all the ideas it …
Years back, when I was clearly more of an optimist than I am now, I started collecting links on ‘promoting your book’. Just the links, not the articles, because I didn’t want to fill up my computer with useless words. And now that I have a book, of course all …